


A Sure Thing

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Assorted Other Sex Acts Not Worth Tagging, Cunnilingus, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Mostly Maxiosa tbh, Not a Whump fic, Pre-Canon, Prostitution, Unsafe Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-27 13:15:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7619506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That won't do at all,” the gatekeeper says. He tsks loudly, then turns to the scribe besides him, and the two of them have some sort of rapid conversation in what might be code or might be a language Max doesn't speak. When he's finished he faces Max again and smiles, all teeth. “A day's work in the brothel is good for a day in the city.”</p><p>“Fuck you,” Max says reflexively and settles his bag back on his shoulder, three seconds from walking away.</p><p>“No, fuck <i>you</i>,” the gatekeeper purrs. “It's the only employment open at the moment, and you have nothing else of interest to trade.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sure Thing

**Author's Note:**

> You know [that bit in Beyond Thunderdome](https://youtu.be/nZPCICxQ3D0?t=270) where the guy at the entrance to Bartertown tells Max "Sorry, the brothel's full" when Max offers up his "skills"? Yeah.
> 
> Dubious Consent tag because some false pretenses are used initially, because Max is pressured to change his stated limits, and because of the general nature of prostitution.
> 
> The title and the quote Max remembers are from Pretty Woman. Because of course.

Tradecity is nowhere near as large, prosperous, or respected as Bartertown. It makes no attempt to hide the fact that it's shamelessly ripping off the near-mythic city but it does a brisk trade all the same, attracting the sort of business that is more high value than what can be found in your average friendly-enough-to-not-kill-you-outright settlements.

Max would prefer to steer clear of humanity altogether, especially places where people are piled on top of one another like they are in city slums, but his car broke down bad enough that he can't make do, and the last few critical and all-but-impossible-to-find parts he needs to get it running are going to be in someplace like Tradecity if they exist at all. So he packs a bag full of as much tradeable scrap as he has to barter with, leaves the only pieces he cannot possibly part with in the ailing Interceptor under as much camouflaging as he can, and treks out to the city.

He arrives not long after dawn with his water running dangerously low and hears the place before he sees it, a wave of artificial noise that he realizes is more than just the disjointed rumble of numerous engines and far-away sales pitches: there's someone playing music. The closer he gets the easier it is to pick out distinctly, a couple of songs of all genres, Old-World tunes and new compositions and what he's pretty sure is just noise all jumbled up together, and then a short, blaring advertisement for the city itself. Sometimes there are other ads, but it's never long before it jump-cuts to “Tradecity! Best Deals Around! Tradecity! Trades Made In The Shade!”

By the fourth repetition of the artificially-cheerful jingle, Max is considering turning back around despite the fact that he's barely gotten a place in the line of fellow wanderers looking to get inside the gates.

Only the reality of the fact that he won't see the Interceptor running again if he doesn't stay long enough to find those parts keeps him heading towards the entrance of the city, preemptively tired and bristling with distrust for everyone around him. There are deals going on outside the walls but he knows better than to give checking them out serious thought- they'd have a place inside if they had anything actually worth trading.

It takes fifty repetitions of the advert before he reaches the head of the line, a shaded booth occupied by two men and behind them an open gate to a small, repurposed, and mostly-demolished Before town.

“Purpose?” one of the men says without inflection, while the other scratches figures onto a slate tablet without looking up.

“Trading,” Max says, and having watched the others ahead of him for cues, he swings his bag off his shoulder to show that it's full of loot.

The man looks at it perfunctorily, then flicks his eyes over Max with a glimmer of real interest. He leans forward against the table of the booth. “And what do you have for admission?”

Not understanding the question Max frowns, and gives the bag a little shake to show off that it's full. “Stuff's good enough for bartering,” he says, “My business is good.”

The gatekeeper shakes his head, the beginnings of an unsettling smile building on his face. “Your bits and bobs might get you something inside, but you'll need to get in, first.”

The advert plays out over the mash of loudspeakers again, each just slightly out of sync with the others, and Max contemplates finding the source and shooting it out. The people who'd been close enough for him to overhear at the gate hadn't had to pay any separate entrance fee and the change irritates him further. “It's what I've got,” he says gruffly.

“That won't do at all,” the gatekeeper says. He tsks loudly, then turns to the scribe besides him, and the two of them have some sort of rapid conversation in what might be code or might be a language Max doesn't speak. When he's finished he faces Max again and smiles, all teeth. “A day's work in the brothel is good for a day in the city.”

“Fuck you,” Max says reflexively and settles his bag back on his shoulder, three seconds from walking away.

“No, fuck _you_ ,” the gatekeeper purrs. “It's the only employment open at the moment, and you have nothing else of interest to trade.”

“I can fix mechanics,” he counters, because there were always engines of some sort needing to be repaired and it was a far sight better than what was being suggested.

From behind him the next person in line loudly complains, “Will you hurry up? Some of us have important business to attend to.”

Max whirls around and glares, but resists the urge to draw a gun and make them shut up. The Tradecity jingle plays again.

“We have enough greaseworkers,” the gatekeeper says, “And he's quite right, you're holding up the line. A few hours doing honest work, or remain outside the gates? Your choice, but do decide quickly.”

Max grinds his teeth together, hands balled up into fists. All he wants is to trade the random crap he's scavenged for the parts he needs- the thought of having to work in a brothel, having to whore himself out for the privilege of being inside the city at all, to have hands and eyes all over him and have to touch people in return, makes his skin crawl. Each breath comes harshly as he forces himself to think. Without the right parts, the Interceptor will never run. And without the Interceptor, he's as good as dead. It's just bodies, just sex.

“Deal,” he growls out.

“Excellent,” the gatekeeper says with a bright smile, and gestures for someone behind him to step forward as the scribe scribbles something into his ledger. “Nara will escort you. Have a _lovely_ day in Tradecity.”

Max glares at him, but at least he's in the city, now. Nara turns out to be an intimidatingly tall woman outfitted in straps of studded leather, a gun at her hip, and not much else. She leads him silently through the gates to one of the few intact buildings, a crumbling concrete two-story that might have been a storefront once, before the world ended. There's no glass left in the wide front windows, but the wire door still opens and shuts, a sun-faded plastic placard cheerily declaring “Come In, We're Open!” flapping a little in the restless breeze. A sign hanging off the front where a store name might have gone is now just a square of red plastic that he would bet glows somehow when it gets dark, a red-light district of one.

“Fresh meat,” Nara calls out to someone else- his eyes adjust to the shade of the unlit interior enough to see that it's another woman, this one short and round and vaguely motherly with her graying hair pinned up and cracked glasses at the tip of her nose, not particularly in keeping with his image of a whorehouse worker.

“Thank you, dear,” she says, and with a nod Nara starts back out. “Day trade?” she asks Max, her voice sweet and concerned-sounding enough that it's no less unbalancing than her appearance.

He shrugs, and she smiles encouragingly.

“In that case you'll be here for the next ten hours,” she tells him, and he starts a little at the shock of hearing such a long sentence. “You'll do whatever your customers ask, so long as it doesn't involve death or children. If I hear you're shirking I'll tie you down myself, and if you try to leave before your contract is up you'll be shot like a dog in the street. Understood?”

Max is rather taken aback by the disparity between her demeanor and her words, and he shifts in place uncomfortably. The idea of being a whore at all is bad enough, but ten whole hours of it and with basically no limits on what could be asked of him...

The woman is looking at him expectantly, and reluctantly he nods because what choice does he have? He can feel eyes on him, far too many to account for even if only a fraction have weapons to take him down should he try running for it.

“Excellent! We're glad to have you on board. There are booths in the next room if your customer wants some privacy, and for slopwork use the back alley please, it keeps the smell down for the rest of us. Have as much water as you'd like, dear, but don't waste the good stuff on washing up!” The way she smiles, a little forceful and overbearingly cheery, and the offer of free water- he would put money down on it being laced with drugs, something to get him strung-out and addicted so he keeps working off a perpetual debt. “Payment is handled by the minders, so don't you worry about that. If you need me, just ask for Mamma.”

That seems to be his only introduction to working the brothel, because she waves him off without another word and walks off to talk to someone else. Max takes up a spot in the corner and hoists his pack in a little closer as he surveys the room with his back to the wall. There's broken-down furniture littered here and there, patched so there's no stuffing actively spilling out but worn, covered in layers of stains and filth, and more than a few with broken frames. The people are a mix of all types- young to old, healthy, sickly, high or sober looking, natural, modded to hell. There's more women than men, or so it looks at first glance, but there's some of each and a little of everything in between, with an equally diverse array of customers.

He presses himself a little more firmly to the wall.

People off the street stroll in through the door (or hop over the windowsills), walk over to whoever they want, and for the most part head through the back doors, to where- he doesn't want to actually think of her as Mamma, but he has no other name for her- had said there were booths. Others have their chosen whore drop to their knees right there, or bend over one of the pieces of furniture.

Max supposes that it's good for business, an advertisement of services just like that goddamn Tradecity jingle that keeps playing over and over. He hopes no one picks him, hopes even more that if someone does he's at least given the slight dignity of privacy.

He watches with apprehension as one of the male prostitutes gets splayed out over a beaten-down couch and fucked in the ass, realizing that it's likely someone will want _his_ ass at some point and he's not even a little bit prepared for that, in any sense.

Eventually it happens that he catches someone's eye. The guy is perfectly average, for a wastelander's standard of average; he's a little taller than Max, a little older, a little more eccentrically dressed, but he's not carrying any human body parts or tatted up to look like a lizard so he's probably not too far off the deep end. When he tells Max to get on his knees and suck him there's no malice in his voice, and he can't decide if it helps or not.

Max gets on his knees, and the man pulls his dick out through his pants, and he doesn't have to do much sucking at all because the guy- his customer, his _john_ \- is looking to just rut into his mouth. He gags and coughs whenever the dick hits the back of his throat, which seems to not bother the guy very much as long as he keeps his teeth covered and manages to not throw up from the jabs.

The man comes with a grunt and a splash of fluid, tucks himself away when he's done, and tosses something shiny not at Max, but at a person dressed much the same as the woman who led him in had been. He assumes this is one of the “minders” Mamma had mentioned, and wonders if they watch every transaction, if they keep track of which whore earns what. Then the guy walks away, and Max gets back up to his feet and tries to swallow away the lingering taste of salt and bitterness on his tongue, and wonders how long ten hours is going to be.

The advertisement jingle plays again.

By the time he's been there about three hours, as far as he can figure, he's had more brushes with more types of sex than he's had in the last ten years combined. Mamma comes by to give him an official break at about hour five, but he doesn't have more than a few mouthfuls of water in his own pack and wouldn't dare try the brothel's supply unless in dire need. He isn't allowed to leave the building to trade for more, of course, so he chokes down mouthfuls of painfully dry snake jerky and tries to be grateful that he isn't doing anything particularly athletic for the most part.

Most of the time he spends on his knees, and his left has been screaming bloody murder for long enough that it's something of a relief when a john wants something different. He'd found a jar of petroleum jelly with finger-shaped gobs missing from it on a shelf in the dunny, and as much as it made his skin crawl he slipped fingers up his ass with its help, so that when he is eventually told to bend over and take it up the ass it isn't what he'd call pleasant, but it doesn't do any damage.

Mamma had said to do anything he's told unless there's death or children involved, and while he's thankful that most are looking for something simple, just a warm body to rut into, he stretches the intent of that rule because there's more than one customer with breeding parts who want to get fucked in them. It's unlikely for anything to happen from it, but he can't accept the risk. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if the slim odds of a single fuck bearing fruit turn against his favor and a child of his own blood is brought into the world. One such person backhands him and storms away to find a more willing whore, but no one forces him and no one reports him to Mamma.

The gatekeeper shows up about six hours in, looking around the room with a smug smile that only grows when he sees Max propped up in the corner, squashing his pack between him and the wall so nothing gets stolen from it. He wishes he could say he's surprised when the man takes him to the back room and orders him to strip, but he's not.

“ _Were_ there other jobs?” Max asks when he's done having his ass pounded, and the gatekeeper smiles at him like he's a particularly dull student who's finally figured out the correct answer.

“There's _always_ room to haggle a deal,” he says, and patronizingly ruffles a hand through Max's hair before he leaves, whistling as he goes.

The Tradecity advertisement becomes embedded in his brain. It's not a bad way to measure time by since the music in between never plays for too long or too short, and he sometimes sees if he can get a john to finish before it plays again, counts how many cycles he manages to get away with not servicing anyone.

It's strange in a dull way how quickly he stops caring about the amount of contact he's enduring, about being made to do things even in the front room. He thinks in the back of his mind that he's probably repressing a hell of a lot but it's not a particularly bad thing to care less about it, so he doesn't make any effort to stop.

When he finishes with his latest john about eight hours in and walks back into the front room he notices that it's eerily silent, everyone radiating an aura of tense expectation. Max hasn't even pretended to talk to any of his fellow whores so rather than ask anyone he looks around to try and see what the matter is.

It's pretty obvious right away- crowding in the doorway is a large group of people, all dressed and- he squints against the contrast of unlit interior and afternoon sun outside- _painted_ alike, clearly a gang. There's been a few small groups before- couples, a trio now and again, once a foursome- but he counts a dozen easy and feels a little sick at the thought, even though he's already serviced more than that over the course of his day.

The one at the head of the group, talking with Mamma- it's the arm that catches his attention first, a brutal-looking metal mechanism that glints in the sunlight. Only when he follows the lines of the straps to the body it's attached to does he realize that unlike what he can see of the rest of the gang, this one is a woman. It's not that female customers are unusual, but there's an extra surge of adrenaline when he sees one, even as dulled as the day has made the rest of his reactions, a hit of assessing interest he can't help followed by queasy fear and guilt.

Her skin isn't painted white but she's smeared with black over her forehead like some of the others, and when he accidentally makes eye contact the contrast makes her pale eyes stand out sharply. Max looks away as quick as he can, pushes himself back against the wall like it'll help him not be picked for the twelve-or-more-person-gang-bang that's clearly about to go down.

His luck for such things has always been pretty terrible. The woman talks with Mamma for another minute and then is directed to the "Employees Only" door that houses a staircase and who knows what else, where only a fraction of all the potential clients he's seen walking in are invited to go. Mamma walks unerringly over to him and claps him on the shoulder, smiling benignly as she ignores how uncomfortable he knows he looks. As soon as the woman ascends the stairs, the rest of her group streams in through the doorway with hoops and hollers, picking whores left and right gleefully. So it's not a gang-bang he's been chosen for, at least, and some small part of him relaxes at that mercy.

“You've caught a very special guest's eye,” Mamma tells him, and the tenseness returns. She starts leading him towards the staircase and he wonders what's on the second floor. Elaborate torture set-ups, maybe, the one place where “death” isn't off the table. “If you please her, I'll consider waiving the rest of your contract. If by chance you don't...” She trails off rather than finish, but the look she's giving him tells him enough.

Max follows her up the stairs reluctantly, knee protesting every step. The second floor appears at first glance to be a smaller version of the downstairs, just with better furniture and cleaner whores. It looks that way at second glance, too. Instead of a doorway leading to partitioned off “rooms” made from scraps of fabric and old shelving units, there's two hallways on either side lined with actual rooms, each with an actual door. It's pretty clearly where those with actual money visit rather than buying the cheap hookers on the floor below, and he wonders if it's any better or worse to be working for these johns.

Mamma brusquely scrubs at his face and hands for a moment in the front room while the other whores look on in tittering amusement, using water that does indeed have an undertone of something chemical to it. Then she shoves him at one of the closed doors, knocks sharply, and leaves him to the whims of her “special guest”.

The door opens before she's gone more than a step or two, but other than following the movement with her eyes, the woman who opened it pays Mamma no mind. She runs her gaze over Max and then steps out of the doorway, sweeping out her metal hand to gesture him in.

It should be like any other transaction he's done so far, but the warning and the new location combined with the woman's silent staring is fairly unnerving. There's a bed- a real, actual bed with mattress and frame- in the corner and no signs of torture equipment or larger-than-accidental bloodstains on the floor, but the rasp of a chain lock sliding shut as the door shuts still sounds final.

Max eyes her up distrustfully, trying to decide what makes her a special guest and what sort of things she's going to make him do with the freedom that apparently grants her. She's healthy-looking, aside from the missing arm, her limbs shaped by compact muscle and hair cut too short to get a hold on, outfitted like a fighter instead of a scav. Pretty obviously she's someone in charge of those painted gang members downstairs from the way they deferred to her, but standing close enough to see the slight apprehension on her face and in the way she's standing, the effect of her imposing entrance is diminished somewhat.

She says nothing as they assess each other, and probably he should wait his turn but he's fairly sure from the way she's built that she's got a woman's parts under her leathers and there's one thing he just won't do, so he says, “If you've got a cunt 'm not fucking it.”

The woman flares her nostrils, but doesn't do anything so obvious as glare- rather her gaze intensifies to a burning green that he can't hope to meet head-on. “You'll do as you're told,” she says with a voice like steel, “For the next hour I _own_ you.”

“I'll lick you out,” he says, not willing to back down on this and sure there's some other whore waiting downstairs who'll do the job if that's what she's after, “Fuck your ass if you want, but not your breeding parts.”

He doesn't expect her to react violently, so he's caught off guard when she launches herself at him with a snarl of rage. Max grapples with her as well as he's able, delayed reaction and a long day or not, but she gets those metal fingers around his throat to _squeeze_ as she presses him up against the wall, and he remembers that death might actually be on the table up here. He forces himself to go still because it seems like she's just trying to intimidate him for now, his muscles trembling with the effort of not fighting against her hold.

“Never call me that again,” she hisses, shaking his neck so his head knocks against the wall none-to-gently like she wants to make sure the point sticks.

When she releases him Max springs away, ready to fend her off if she attacks again, but she only takes a deep breath and shakes out her prosthesis. Her eyes rake over him like she's looking for his weak points rather than to judge if he's attractive enough to fuck, zeroing in for a moment on the brace wrapped around his leg.

“Get on your knees,” she says not two seconds later, taking a step closer to him again.

The floors here are wooden, a step up from the cracked-linoleum-over-concrete downstairs but not by much. Max lets himself glare at her, uncaring if he's giving a bad impression that will lead to Mamma hearing about her dissatisfaction, but he folds down to his knees for what feels like the hundredth time that day.

He's eye-level with the flaming skull emblem hanging between her legs when she stops in front of him, only a handspan away. “Open my pants,” she says, because of course she's going to be one of those.

Max does his best to keep his weight off his bad knee- not that the other is doing much better after a day like this- and he does as he's told, unbuckling her belts and then the fly of her trousers. She hasn't said to tug them down and he debates whether he should take the initiative or wait for her to give the order, not sure which gets her off and which she'll take offense to.

His fingers brush against a sliver of skin while he's deliberating and she flinches hard enough to step back, jerking away abruptly. She lets out a frustrated noise and turns away from him, paces the length of the small room, checks that the chain on the door is still fastened. While she's there she unhooks the dangling medallion from her belt completely, drops it to the floor and covers it with her booted foot for a moment, looking like she'd like to kick it away or stomp it into the dust.

Max watches closely, but without much interest. He doesn't think she's going to attack him again unless he provokes her, but there's no telling if her own hang-ups will be enough to count as provocation.

He adjusts his weight on the floor again, trying to find a position that isn't quite such a strain, and at the creak of floorboards she looks at him again. Her eyes are bright against their field of black, focused. She stares at him like she's studying an engine schematic, or a battlefield, or a troublesome gun she wants to stop from backfiring. Like something that needs to be fixed, put into its place.

After a moment she strides over purposefully, face set with determination. It's not exactly the sort of look Max wants on his bedpartners' faces, but he doesn't think it really matters when that partner is actually a customer.

She shoves her trousers and underwear down to her knees and he can't help the way his lizard brain perks to attention at the sight of dark hair against pale skin right in front of him, the way he reflexively takes an inhale to get her scent. Her newly uncovered skin is smooth and pale and cleaner than the average wastelander, crossed with a few scars but nothing that looks like disease, thighs strongly muscled to match her bare arms. He hates a little bit that she's close enough to beautiful for this to not exactly be a hardship.

“Use your mouth,” she says, and gives no further instructions. It's not worth it to play dumb when he knows what she means, and the quicker she gets off- but no, she'd said she 'owns him' for the _hour_. Still, antagonizing her doesn't seem worth the energy.

Max moves a hand to rest against her thigh for balance and the muscles jump and tense, but this time she doesn't move. She didn't say he could use his hands to hold her open, but she didn't say he couldn't, either, and standing the way she is her pussy is pretty much inaccessible. He pushes her legs apart a little more and waits for her to rebalance, then with a glance up at her face to gauge her expression- jaw clenched, eyes staring into the far wall- he leans in and licks the hanging folds of her cunt.

She flinches again, leg lifting up to kick or run away, but she sets it down firmly and holds her ground. Under his tongue her pussy is hot but dry, utterly parched, which from her reactions isn't much of a surprise. Whatever it is that's brought her to the whorehouse, he doesn't think it's entirely because she wants to get off quick.

He lets his own water-starved mouth supply the moisture at first, keeps his tongue and lips soft and careful as he explores, letting her get used to the touch. It doesn't really matter to him whether she's enjoying it or not- he's earning his entrance fee to the city either way, assuming Mamma doesn't come up with an excuse to try and keep him once his time is up- but the challenge of it taunts him, and he generally likes to think that he's pretty good at this.

So maybe there's an element of misplaced pride in it, but Max is already down there anyway- he might as well do the job properly.

When he licks over her clit, direct but careful, she lets out a fractured gasp but doesn't twitch away. By the time he's gone over the entirety of her pussy she's finally wet, sways minutely into his mouth a little when he does something she particularly enjoys. He's feeling just a smidge proud of himself, and lets himself get a bit more forceful, more direct as he tests out what he's learned from his explorations.

She moans a little, quiet and surprised, when he presses the flat of his tongue up against her clit as he sucks on it, and he smiles to himself at the honest noise.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get much more progress than that. He doesn't know her body at all, and her reactions are too inconsistent to know if he's on the right track half the time, and when he's heard that fucking Tradecity advert three times since starting she shoves his head away.

“This isn't working,” the woman says with frustration, and flexes her metal hand so hard it creaks.

Max licks the taste of her pussy off his lips, offering up no suggestions. He adjusts his weight on his knees again, coming to the realization that he's grown at least halfway hard from eating her out, despite the discomfort of the floor and the fact that he's already gotten it up to fuck other johns twice today. She flicks her eyes down to him at the movement, the outline of his erection not escaping her notice.

“It's not the parts that turn you off,” she says, speculative. “So why don't you fuck cunts?”

He glares at her, but answers anyway. “House rules,” he says, “No children.”

She snorts in amusement, slightly less guarded in her demeanor now that she's warmed up from the attention paid to her pussy. “That's not what the rule's about,” she says, the first customer to call him out on his creative interpretation, but then her expression goes a little dark, complicated and serious again. “It's not something you'd have to worry about anyway.”

Max's glare turns to suspicion. He won't have to worry about it because he won't be fucking her cunt, no matter how appealing the thought of slipping inside a willing pussy seems. He hasn't since- he forces the thought away before he can finish it. There's no place for it here.

“They cut out my uterus,” she says, and with disdain clarifies, “My ' _breeding parts_ '. Not that they were much good at it before.”

He's no less suspicious, and seeing this, the woman hikes up the edge of the black leather around her waist and taps at her skin to direct his attention. There's a small horizontal scar low on her abdomen where her finger rests, pale and raised and a little crooked. It could be from any number of injuries, and he can see the shadow of stretch marks on her exposed skin just as easily; if the surgeon knows what they're doing and the patient gets lucky a survived cesarean doesn't necessarily guarantee infertility, even done in the wasteland.

He can't really come up with a reason for her to lie though- if she's so desperate to be fucked in her cunt she could very easily demand him switched with another of the prostitutes waiting downstairs, or make good on her statement of 'owning' him and try to use force, rather than putting in the effort of faking what seems to him like real candor.

Max grunts, acknowledging the possibility.

“That your only hold-back?” she asks as she moves her hand away, and he has a feeling if he tries to bluff his way through having more she'll find ways around them, too. And he's _tired_ , tired of the long day and all the touching he's endured, tired enough that he doesn't have the energy to maneuver against someone not using force when what he's protesting is something he'd want if not for that singular risk. Something he does want anyway, if he's honest with himself.

He thinks about the gatekeeper's words about there always being room to haggle, and nods with a touch of reluctance. It's a remote a possibility anyway for just once in wasteland conditions to be enough, but... He'll never know for sure, is the worst part. Even as empty as the world is nowadays it's still plenty big enough for their paths to never cross again.

The woman smiles a little, more to herself than to him. “Good. On the mattress,” she orders.

His bad knee pops and cracks as he gets up from the floor and he winces, but at least the mattress will be softer. Max sits on the edge of the bed, the mattress grimy and raised off the floor on a metal frame that has bits of reinforcements welded to it here and there. Probably bad for business if the bed falls apart while a customer is using it, he thinks, and tries not to focus on the sturdy metal rings clearly meant for restraints bolted onto the frame.

She stares at him with the same figuring-out-a-schematic face as before, and it should damp down his arousal for her to still have only her trousers pulled halfway down, even with a flash of wetness on her thighs, but instead the contrast of soft vulnerability and armored hardness works, doesn't take away from the feeling of eroticism underlying what's really just a transaction that happens to involve bodies. He's still reluctantly half-hard, and doesn't think it'll be much of a fight to get all the way there.

“Take off that pack,” she tells him, “The jacket, too.”

Max isn't particularly worried about her stealing his bag of scrap and allows that to thunk to the floor easily, but he curls his hand into the cuff of his jacket. He doesn't want to get any more undressed than he has to for this, even if it means the possibility of stains on his clothes, definitely not feeling much like this is one of the other “sessions” that he can block out easily.

When she straightens up from tugging off her boots so she can peel out of her leathers completely, she raises a disdainful eyebrow at the fact that his jacket is still on but doesn't repeat the command. “Lie down.”

He moves obediently, stretching out along the mattress with its myriad of stains that he doesn't want to think about too hard. It's something of a relief that he apparently won't be up on his knees again, but laying flat does nothing to put him at ease. The woman approaches like she's worried he'll jump up and attack, despite the fact that she has the advantage of being the customer, still has that heavy metal arm strapped to her.

She climbs onto the bed and climbs over him, until she's sitting on his thighs and he can see the pink flash of her pussy when he looks down along the length of his body. “Take out your cock,” she says, voice betraying her hesitance for the first time since their encounter's begun.

Max undoes his belt and shoves his leathers down enough to comfortably pull his dick out into the air. Just having himself in hand, a warm living body that he can still taste on the back of his tongue sitting pressed against him, is enough to have him filling out a little more, and he looks to her for his cue.

She's staring at his cock, not the flattering sort where someone is appreciating his body nor the uncomfortable kind where he's being evaluated like a piece of meat. She stares like she's not really seeing him, and the wasteland is cruel enough that it doesn't take a genius to figure out why any woman, but particularly one who reacted so drastically to just the word breeding and has silvery stretch scars across her belly, would look at him like that, and he can't force himself to remain willfully ignorant any longer if they're really going to do this.

“You don't have to,” Max says, quiet, guessing from her earlier reactions that it's not what she wants to hear but wanting to make sure she knows anyway.

She snaps her gaze up to his face and glares, expression losing the edge of fear in favor of determination. She doesn't bother to reply but instead shuffles forward on her knees until her pussy's right up against his dick, a teasing brush of heat and slickness that he can't help but make a weak sound at the feel of. His hand is knocked aside to be replaced with hers, and he's still not entirely hard but her hand and the wet warm slide of her lips against him is doing the trick with blinding speed, and without any more warning than an inhaled breath she moves to sink down onto him.

The press of his cockhead against her opening makes her hiss out in what he's pretty sure is real pain rather than just discomfort, and Max unthinkingly twitches sideways to jerk away as best he can with her weight pinning his hips down to the mattress.

“Hey, hey,” he says, bringing his hand down to stop her from trying to force his dick inside before she hurts herself. “Don't have to go so fast.”

The woman keeps glaring at him, but it doesn't matter that he's just there to be a willing body or how warm her pussy is- if she's in actual pain, there's no way he's going to be able to stay hard. He hadn't even used his fingers when he was licking her earlier, and he has a hunch it's been a while since anything's been inside her.

“C'mere,” Max says, and gestures with his free hand for her to move further up his torso. She hesitates for a moment like she wants to argue away his objections again before moving, hovering over his abdomen so only the skin on the insides of her legs touches him. It would probably work better if he could get his mouth on her again, since that had seemed to be doing some good earlier even if it wasn't enough for her to come, but he doesn't press the issue.

He instead strokes along her inner thigh, close to but not touching her pussy, telegraphing his intentions until some of the tenseness leaves her to be replaced with frustration. Then he draws his hand back to his mouth to wet his fingers, harder than it could be after a long day of avoiding drugged water, and slides them through her lips. She's still somewhat wet, which is reassuring, and when he circles around the nub of her clit carefully she lets out a quiet exhalation.

Just a single finger teasing at the opening of her cunt makes her tense back up, but she rolls her hips into it like she's forcing herself. Max moves back and forth between touching her clit and her entrance until she's impatiently pushing against him in earnest and his fingers are coated in fresh slick; only then does he slide one inside.

She freezes, but for a much shorter period of time. He curls his finger towards her front, not really searching for her sensitive spots but just attempting a different sensation than thrusting, and she lets out a surprised-sounding gasp. He smiles, and rubs against her clit with the heel of his hand before repeating the motion.

Max isn't really trying for more than just getting her warmed up and used to the feeling of something inside her, but she comes when he's moved up to working two fingers against her walls like that, stretched out over him with her eyes shut and hips rocking, pussy squeezing against his fingers. When she's stopped twitching and her breathing is less ragged he hums an inquiry, wondering if she's done, if she wants to keep going like this, if she wants to push forward to her original goal again.

The woman has a pleased, triumphant look on her face, and she leans down with a satisfied smile on her lips like she's going to kiss him, before stopping herself. The subject of kissing hasn't come up with any of the other johns and he's not really sure how he feels about it when the situation is already so far over his head. In the back of his mind he halfway remembers some quote about not kissing on the mouth and he isn't sure where it's from, but he thinks it applies here. To his relief she only licks her lips instead and pulls back, glancing down towards where his dick is still pretty hard despite the lack of attention being paid to it.

She reaches her flesh hand back and gives it a stroke, testing it out without being tentative, and he makes a low noise at the touch but holds himself back as much as he can from otherwise reacting to it. Sure he wants to be touched, to be buried in her pussy, but even if she wasn't his fucking _customer_ he doesn't think that his pleasure should be the focus here, not with the story he can read between the lines of her behavior.

“Let's do this,” she says, more relaxed now than she has been at any time prior, the hint of a smile still playing at the corners of her mouth.

When she moves to sink onto his dick this time Max doesn't stop her, only wraps a hand around her ass to help steady her. She tenses up again when the head of his dick presses up against her, but relaxes a breath later and he is sinking in, in, in, a delicious slide of wet warm friction that isn't accompanied by any signs of real discomfort that he can see.

He groans appreciatively when she comes to a rest, hips resting against his and pussy wrapped tight and hot around his cock. With effort he holds himself still to wait for her next move until he simply can't anymore, an errant flutter of her muscles around him making him twitch his hips and press further up into her cunt.

She makes a noise that's half-surprise, half-pleasure, and doesn't rebuke him, so he draws back and repeats the movement, a tentative rolling up into the heat of her pussy. This time her sigh is all-pleasure, and he uses his hands to urge her up a fraction more, giving him room to work.

He braces his feet on the mattress for leverage but keeps his thrusts gentle, shallow, more rocking than anything else and listens to the hitches in her breathing, feels for the way her pussy contracts down around him. After a few repetitions she moves with him, pushing into each thrust, her flesh hand drifting down to her clit so she can touch herself exactly how she wants.

It's such a change from when she first ordered him to his knees that Max marvels a little at how readily she's taking pleasure from this, how open her expression is.

“Keep going,” she pants, as if there's any real danger of him stopping, “Keep going...”

She orgasms a minute later, pussy clenching down around him and her voice crying out, and he does his best to keep up a steady rhythm through the waves of heat and slickness pulsing against him. She bites her lip and keeps rubbing her clit, hips moving against his faster, harder, until she's barely finished twitching from the first climax before she's coming again with a drawn-out moan and a harsh clench of her muscles, her entire body seeming to contract down around him.

Because she'd told him to keep going Max tries to hold off, he does, but he can't really hope to stave off his orgasm when there's a beautiful woman above him coming around his dick like that twice in succession. His hips snap up against her once, twice, and even though she _said_ and he mostly believes her, he pulls out of her cunt at the last moment to spurt over the soft skin of her thighs instead of inside her pussy. There's some risk just from having been in her at all, but anything he can do to lessen the odds will help him when he tries to live with himself later.

She lets out a shaky laugh as she pulls away from him, victorious and thrilled and disbelieving, and swings her leg over his torso so she can collapse onto her side on the mattress, neither pressing up against him nor pulling away, just resting how she happened to fall. He doesn't mind overly much at the moment that her metal arm is digging into his side or that she's still close enough for her breath to be felt against his skin, feeling contented and a bit proud himself, until he blinks and frowns to himself in surprise at the thought. He's been having various forms of sex all day, but this was the first encounter that felt like actual sex, something more than just a physical transaction. And he doesn't even know her name, won't ever see her again.

The fucking Tradecity jingle blares out again, loud even through the walls of the building, and the woman lets out another quiet huff of laughter that's unguarded and honest.

Max is thinking about asking for her name, just because he feels strange to have had this moment of connection and not know even that much about her, but-

He won't, because it's just the hormones of an orgasm getting to him after a long and difficult day.

They're strangers, and she picked him out of a room of other whores just because she liked something about the way he looked, and as the afterglow of decent sex dims he'll be glad that they'll never see each other again. She has an air about her that makes him think she's dangerous that way for far more than physical reasons, though she's certainly beautiful enough, especially relaxed and flush with victorious pleasure, that he wouldn't be surprised if some are ensnared from that alone. He doesn't want even this much of a fleeting sense of connection, and if he could summon up the energy he'd be angry at himself for even the momentary slip, expects that when he's finally on his own again the anger will be there waiting.

Someone knocks on the door, “Five minutes!”

The woman sighs a little, but it's probably good timing considering the places his thoughts are straying to entirely without his permission. She climbs over him to get her feet back on the ground and stretches languorously, all her long sleek lines on display, the sheen of her slick and his cum glinting between her thighs, and that interruption was _definitely_ good timing. Max grabs a grimy-and-getting-grimier rag from his bag to wipe himself off with and then tucks himself away, watching with a last little bit of self-indulgence from the mattress as she bends and stretches to clean and do up her clothing.

She picks up the medallion she'd thrown to the ground earlier and stares at it for a moment with an indecipherable expression before clipping it back into place, waterfall of chains sweeping along her thighs as she moves. Dressed she looks fully imposing again; though the black on her forehead has smudged and run a little from sweat there's a relaxed attitude to her posture that she didn't have before, and it makes the sense of authority she came in with fall more naturally across her shoulders.

“Here,” she says, and holds out a bottle towards him. The liquid inside the battered plastic is clear but Max stares at it distrustfully until she opens the top to take a swallow, then holds it out again. Not undrinkabley fouled then, and unlike the brothel he can't imagine why she would want him hooked onto some drug mix. He wasn't _that_ good. “It's Citadel's finest Aqua-Cola,” she says, as if that phrase should mean anything to him.

He takes it from her and sniffs, then takes a tentative sip. The water is clean on his tongue, pure. Could still be hot, but... He drinks down a longer pull and then tries to pass it back, still carefully more than half full.

The woman shakes her head. “Keep it.” He stares at her in shock, eyebrows up around his hairline. Sharing water was one thing, but giving the entire thing away, bottle and all- unheard of. His time and services have already been paid for, after all. “You've never heard of the Citadel, have you?” she asks, flesh fingers rubbing at the back of her neck where he'd noticed a decorative-looking scar, some minor body mod he'd paid no closer attention to beyond seeing that it was there.

He shakes his head in answer.

“It's a few days northeast of here,” she says, “Cleanest water left on this damn dustball.”

Max thinks that maybe she's hinting that she wouldn't mind seeing him again, a thought that fills him with terror and guilt and anger, but she looks steadily at him and continues with, “Do yourself a favor and keep steering clear of it.”

That's about as surprising as the gift of water, but he nods in acknowledgment because advice like that is usually sound. She sweeps the room briskly to make sure she hasn't left anything behind, then undoes the chain on the door and steps out into the hallway. He's standing close enough behind her for a moment to see that the scar on the back of her neck is the same symbol as on the medallion around her hips, the one she'd stepped on.

He follows her a few steps behind, trying not to crowd her, mildly relieved when the only sign of the painted gang from earlier is a single man leaning against one of the support posts in the middle of the room, watching the stairway through shaded goggles that obscure his expression almost entirely but are otherwise completely unnecessary in the already-dim room.

“All set, boss?” he asks. Max can't see his eyes behind the dark glass but he gets the feeling that he's being given a once-over, and finds himself glad that he'd tucked the water bottle into his pack before leaving the room, just so he doesn't get caught up in any sort of intra-gang tension.

“Boys accounted for?” she says in reply, stepping away from the "Employee's Only" door and Max without a second look, a slight looseness to her gait the only evidence of what she'd just been doing.

He doesn't catch any more of their conversation because Mamma appears, clapping him on the arm and smiling proudly. “Good enough work to call the last hours even,” she tells him. “Go on and git, unless you want to stay...? Earn yourself some real nice tokens in a day's work. Spend a few, too.” Her laugh is more like a cackle, and Max waits uneasily for it to die down.

“I'll be going,” he says, relieved when she doesn't seem offended by this.

It has been a very long day, the sign above the building buzzing as it lights up electric red and the sunshine turned long-shadowed when he finally steps outside the brothel, and he'd like to find some safe-enough hole to sleep in but knows it doesn't exist in a place crawling with this much humanity. So he just hoists his pack up higher on his shoulders as that god-forsaken Tradecity advert plays yet again and finally sets out to look for a parts dealer, trying to keep the gatekeeper's remark about haggling room in mind as he mentally runs through the inventory of what he has to offer.

 


End file.
